By Betsy Hill and Roger Stark
Many parents report that their child can pronounce words and read aloud but cannot remember or use the information afterward. Teachers may say the student “can read” but lacks comprehension. That raises a basic question: if a child can decode text but cannot understand it, are they really reading?
How students move from decoding printed words to truly understanding text has challenged educators for generations. Recent declines in national reading scores and growing interest in the Science of Reading have renewed attention to this issue. The Science of Reading frames reading as the combination of four essential skills:
- Decoding (with emphasis on phonemic awareness and phonics),
- Fluency,
- Vocabulary, and
- Comprehension.
Comprehension is the ultimate aim of reading. When comprehension is weak, educators often evaluate decoding, fluency and vocabulary to determine whether gaps in those areas are preventing understanding.
However, even when students can accurately decode, read fluently, and know vocabulary words in isolation, comprehension problems can persist. Some children demonstrate skills in a controlled setting—such as a tutoring session—but fail to apply them in the classroom or on tests. In other words, they can follow rules when prompted but haven’t generalized those skills to real reading situations. If a student cannot understand what they read, they are not truly reading for meaning.
Reading Is Not Just Speech on Paper
It is important to distinguish reading from speech. Humans are biologically prepared for speech: children acquire spoken language naturally with minimal formal instruction. Reading, by contrast, is a cultural invention and is not something our brains are prewired to do at birth. Learning to read requires explicit instruction and the development of neural connections that do not form automatically.
Despite this difference, spoken language and written language are closely related. Written symbols map to sounds and words, and readers interpret those symbols as language. Yet written language—especially English—introduces additional complications. English spelling is often inconsistent, so readers must learn rules and many exceptions (for example: “home, gnome, some, come” are pronounced differently than a strict letter-to-sound mapping would suggest).
Moreover, effective decoding depends on cognitive processes that are not usually thought of as “reading” skills. Cognitive abilities such as sustained attention, visual discrimination, auditory discrimination and sequential processing all influence the ability to decode.
- If a student cannot maintain attention long enough to finish sounding out a word, decoding will be difficult.
- If a student cannot visually discriminate letters quickly (for example, distinguishing r from n or b from p), decoding will be impaired.
- If a student cannot hear subtle differences between sounds (such as b and p or r and l), both spoken language comprehension and decoding will suffer.
- If a student cannot keep letters or sounds in the correct order, decoding will be problematic (children sometimes say “lipskit” instead of “lipstick” or “psghetti” rather than “spaghetti”).
Teachers are often asked to teach decoding to children whose brains may not yet have the underlying skills to perform that complex process efficiently.
Cognitive Skills Underpin All “Reading Skills”
Fluency—the ability to read accurately, smoothly and with expression—cannot be taught in the same step-by-step way as phonics. Fluency develops through practice until decoding becomes automatic. Automaticity allows the brain to perform decoding with minimal conscious effort, freeing working memory and attention for comprehension. But not every learner reaches the needed level of automaticity through practice alone.
Several cognitive skills support the development of reading fluency:
- Visual span: how much visual information a reader can take in at a glance. A wider visual span lets readers process groups of words rather than single words, aiding speed and flow.
- Flexible attention: the ability to shift focus smoothly from word to word and line to line.
- Processing speed: how quickly the brain perceives, interprets and responds to information. Processing speed affects how effortlessly a reader can keep pace with text.
Educational systems rarely assess or explicitly develop visual span, flexible attention and processing speed as part of basic reading instruction, yet these skills play a central role in fluency development.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary and background knowledge are critical for understanding text. Readers constantly fit new information into prior knowledge. If a passage uses unfamiliar concepts, comprehension becomes harder, even if the reader decodes the words correctly.
Knowing a word is not simply a binary state. A reader might infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word from context and understand it while reading, without storing it as a retrievable item in long-term memory. Traditional vocabulary assignments—copy the word, define it, use it in a sentence—may help some students but can fail learners whose strengths lie outside verbal memory. Incorporating visual supports, active use, spaced repetition and connections to prior knowledge improves retention for a wider range of learners.
Like decoding and fluency, vocabulary acquisition depends on cognitive processes (such as verbal memory and visual memory) that vary across students and are not always targeted by classroom practice.
Comprehension
Reading comprehension is a complex cognitive achievement. To examine it clearly, imagine a spoken conversation rather than a written passage—assuming decoding, fluency and vocabulary are in place. Understanding a story in the moment differs from remembering it later. Comprehension in the moment requires verbal reasoning and working memory: holding words in mind while integrating them into coherent meaning. Long-term recall depends on different processes, like consolidation into long-term memory, emotional relevance, rehearsal and whether the information is reused.
Comprehension for reading relies on several key cognitive skills:
Working Memory
Working memory is the capacity to hold and manipulate information in mind while processing it. When reading, a person decodes words, holds strings of words in mind, retrieves background knowledge and integrates everything to build meaning. Working memory is inherently limited; if a reader’s working memory is smaller or easily overloaded, comprehension will suffer even if decoding is adequate.
Visualization
Visualization is the ability to form mental images of what is described in text. Reading is like watching a movie made by the mind. Difficulty generating those mental images can make it harder to follow characters, events or scenes and reduce understanding.
Verbal Reasoning
Verbal reasoning is the skill of thinking with language—interpreting figurative speech, making inferences and drawing connections. It builds on vocabulary and life experience. Without strong verbal reasoning, readers may interpret phrases literally and miss implied meanings or nuanced ideas.
Abstract Reasoning
Abstract reasoning allows readers to see patterns, understand cause and effect, and infer relationships not explicitly stated. It helps fill gaps in narrative and explain characters’ actions or events. Weaker abstract reasoning can leave readers puzzled about motivations and consequences, even when they understand the literal words.
Flexible Thinking
Flexible thinking lets readers shift perspectives, revise interpretations and approach texts from different angles. This skill supports effective problem solving when initial strategies for understanding fail and enables readers to consider multiple meanings or viewpoints.
Building Minds Ready for Reading Skills, Including Comprehension
Comprehension is the point of reading: without it, reading is merely decoding. When children move from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” gaps in comprehension can cause academic struggles and frustration. This article has connected cognitive processes—working memory, attention, visual and auditory discrimination, processing speed, visualization, reasoning and more—to the reading skills educators aim to teach.
The encouraging news is that many of these cognitive skills can be strengthened with targeted, evidence-informed cognitive training and with instruction that integrates the Science of Reading with attention to underlying learning processes. Cognitive training is not a substitute for systematic reading instruction, but when combined—addressing decoding, fluency and vocabulary alongside the cognitive capacities that support them—instruction is more likely to generalize and produce durable comprehension.
When instruction ignores foundational cognitive capacities, students may become discouraged or fail to transfer skills from practice to real classroom tasks. To help children truly read for meaning, educators and families should consider both explicit reading instruction and development of the cognitive skills that make comprehension possible.
Editor’s Note: In part two, we will explore the impact of cognitive skills development on the reading process.
About the authors
Betsy Hill is President of BrainWare Learning Company, an organization focused on applying neuroscience to build learning capacity and help parents and educators support children’s learning. An experienced educator, she has studied the connections between neuroscience and education and has taught strategic thinking at the graduate level. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and an MBA from Northwestern University and is co-author of the book Your Child Learns Differently, Now What?
Roger Stark is Co-founder and CEO of BrainWare Learning Company. He has led efforts to make cognitive literacy skills training and assessment broadly accessible, developing integrated tools for cognitive training and assessment. He is co-author of the book Your Child Learns Differently, Now What?